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We’ve had bath letters for a long time (two sets, of course, so they could both spell their names at the same time #twinproblems), and then I found some little water toys at Target. We had those retractable bath crayons, but they broke almost immediately. And that’s disappointing for toddlers and grown-ups alike.

Awhile back, I decided to add some new fun to bathtime. I found some different bath crayons that looked a bit more hardy, and some water-coloring tablets. Both were a resounding success! The crayons held up beautifully to lots of scribbling–zero breaking. The color drops are really vibrant, and fun to watch dissolve.

Also I have to tell you about this little thing that changed our lives–the Lil Rinser, a bath hat hair cover thing. Our boys HAAAAATE having their hair washed, mostly because they haaaate getting water in their ears and in their eyes. If you hold this thing on their head while rinsing, the water does not get in their hair and eyes!! TODDLER MAGIC!!

Other popular bath toys include plastic cups and funnels for filling and pouring, and a collection of rubber duckies. They get them at our dentist and we’ve gotten some as little tourist trinkets, and they play with them a ton in the bath!

The boys are 3 1/2! And man, we are definitely living with three-year-olds. (Though M says, “I’m thirty-five,” because that’s how much he weighs.) There are a lot of tantrums–most of them are about food, and most of them are when the boys are tired and/or hungry. Sometimes they’re both having a tantrum at the same time. Fun!

Some very common phrases in our house right now include, a whining “I don’t have that much!” which can refer to anything from a pile of magnatiles or a bowl of blueberries. And “You won’t be my best friend anymore!” which is so hilariously threenager that I can’t even take it. Emmett’s also in a phase of responding to any question with “no” and a cheeky grin. Like, “You guys went to the park today?” “No.” “Did you have fun at the play cafe?” “No.” Silly goose. Oh, and if one of them is mad at us, they yell, “Don’t Talk To Me!” Drama galore!

Potty training is going great. They’re both in undies all day with no problem (they FINALLY are doing well with potty at daycare) and are in pullups overnight. We’re dreading the ordeal of night training, so we’re still procrastinating on that.

We made progress on another big-kid update: On Easter Sunday, we randomly changed the cribs to toddler ‘beds.’ It was a rough transition. The first night was actually full of screaming. (Our fault for not preparing them and doing this so randomly.) In the first week, there was some accidental rolling out of bed, there was some purposeful getting out of bed, there were screams, and giggles, and taking forever to get to sleep. Oy, it was so frustrating! However, now that it’s been a couple months, the misbehavior has subsided. There was a fun few days when they were running out of their room giggling after we’d put them to bed. After we shooed them back, we could hear them plotting: M: “Let’s wait till they go away, then we’ll out of bed!” E: “Okay!” (ARGH, twins!) Thankfully, it was only a few nights.

Relatedly, the boys are no longer napping at home. (They are still napping at daycare, though.) This shouldn’t be a surprise, with the bed change and their age, but it is not a welcome update. We really needed that daytime break on weekends–for work, for our own naps, for trips to the gym or grocery store. And, you know, for sanity and some freaking silence.

There is good news though: we’ve started doing a 30-40 minute car nap, which makes the evenings much less cranky. Plus they go to bed a little earlier, and sleep more soundly, and sleep in a bit later. Fewer bedtime shenanigans too. And of course not having to be home for several early afternoon hours really opens up our schedule for events and outings! I really like not having to live according to a nap schedule.

Mornings have changed a bit too. Once they could get up easily by themselves, they’d just start playing magnatiles together, or reading. But often they’d start arguing, and pitter patter into our room, saying, “He won’t share!” or “I don’t have that much!” For the last couple months now, the routine is that they get out of bed and come in to our room, crawling up on our bed to snuggle. It’s pretty stinking adorable to open my eyes to Emmett’s or Malcolm’s sweet face with a big huge grin. Plus it means we can be lazy and stay in bed longer.

I’ve been taking the boys to the local library branch every couple weeks. They love picking up piles of random books and piling onto my lap to read them, and then checking them out. And of course they like returning them into the book drop! I’ve been taking snapshots of the haul each time to keep a record. It’s funny how they’ve gotten really attached to some of the books. And some of the books are really odd, like one they loved was Pat-a-Cake Baby…which I swear was written on some kind of drug trip.

We have a growing (alternately very hip and very unhip) playlist of mostly ‘grown-up’ music that the boys are into right now. Which is great, because it’s all from our own music libraries, so I like the songs. (As opposed to, say, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Spider, or god forbid, There’s a Hole in My Bucket. WORST SONG EVER.) However, when I inevitably find myself singing along to Chandelier or Blank Space, the boys say, No singing, Mama!

After their mind was blown by Under Pressure (this was a few months ago now), they made “microphones” out of chalk holders and they like to “sing” into them. Emmett is always “Fred Mercury” and Malcolm is “David Bowie” or just “David.” Nowadays they sing whatever–sometimes gibberish, sometimes one of these songs (this past week it’s been Shake It Off), sometimes a Red Yarn song (he’s a local kid’s musician). Oh, and now they get to play with the real-looking Rock Band microphone too, which they think is amazing. They plug it in to the heating vent in the living room and carry it around the room to sing.

For a few months, they forgot about their magnatiles, but they are firmly obsessed again. (Which means lots of issues about who has more/not enough.) And they’re really into puzzles right now. We have a few sets (thanks Grandparents!), and they’re able to do them all by themselves now. It’s really cute to hear them parroting things we’ve said about helping them match pieces.

I want to be sure to acknowledge that the annoying stuff is not the whole picture. Yes, the typical 3-year-old behavior sometimes makes me want to scream with frustration and impatience (like getting ready for bedtime, UGH the worst)…but there are a lot of wonderful things about this age too.

We’ve been doing some baking together occasionally. On Valentine’s Day we all made pink chocolate chip cookies. They did such a great job at pouring and stirring and scooping…and eating the batter. 🙂 They ADORE ‘smoolies’ [smoothies] and helping me make them–putting things in the blender, pushing the button. The other day we made apple carrot muffins, and they poured all the ingredients in for me and helped stir.

It surprises me how much they can do. I keep thinking they’re so little and not yet ready for fine-motor manual tasks…but they’re quite agile and capable. We need to remember to allow them to push and explore their physical boundaries.

They still love helping and want to help with everything. (This was true a year ago too–but now they can actually do stuff!). About half the time, of course, that helping comes in the form of a tantrum, like the time I got a spoon out of the drawer to make the oatmeal, and then Emmett started hopping and whiny crying, “I wanted to do it!” Being psychic would be helpful for living with three-year-olds.

Other cute mis-pronounciations include decker-bocker bus (double-decker bus), hot tog (hot dog), wallermelon (watermelon), and Burger Bill (Burgerville). Oh, and the other day I was talking to them about what they can be when they grow up. Emmett wants to be a cooker (a cook) and Malcolm wants to be a fireman.

We started a sticker chart this spring! Originally it was to help with naptime and bedtime, to convince them to stay in their beds. That basically didn’t happen at all. Oh well. We also gave stickers for things like going potty on their own, bussing their table, brushing their teeth on their own. When they filled a whole row of stickers, they got a reward–an extra episode of tv, or time to play iPad games. It’s pretty much the cutest thing watching them get a sticker and put it on their chart. Sadly, the novelty has since worn off…which I don’t mind too much, actually. If they don’t really care about the stickers but they’re still somewhat motivated or working on those items, then that’s still a win.

The best part of three-year-olds is that there is lots of laughter and silliness. They still play together all the time, and it’s happy and peaceful at least 85% of the time. (They do fight over toys or how much each of them have.) (And sometimes the silliness isn’t appropriate, like when it’s bedtime.) But they LOVE playing chase with us, just running in circles in the house or in the garage. They love being tickled, and pretending that I’m a monster trying to get them, or any other random silly game I make up. They like directing things too: “I’m the teacher, you’re the kid.” “Say, ‘I’m going to get you!'” “You chase me!”

And there is so much love and affection. I already mentioned the morning cuddles. When I pick them up from daycare, they literally run over to me ready to tackle me with hugs. It is the best. AND when someone comes back from being gone or away, they will say, “I missed you!” with big happy grins and hugs. Again, the best. They also are still fairly polite, and ask each other to do things, or one will go get/give something to his brother as a favor. They still like to hold hands with us, and they still want to be carried or get a shoulder ride (which is easier than carrying with arms…but hauling a 35-pound preschooler is rough on the shoulders). They still want plenty of hugs and snuggles at bedtime. They’re really so very sweet.

So yeah, overall, this is a really neat age. They understand so much, they can really communicate, they can do lots of things by themselves, and they get excited about so many things. Like seeing an airplane or a MAX train, or eating fresh berries in their morning oatmeal, or coloring pictures for family members. We’re really enjoying these sweet boys right now! ❤ ❤

When I went to the big twins club re-sale in 2013, I had a very specific list of items that I knew our 5 month old babies would need in the short term. When I saw the huge area of big toys, I froze. I tried to think about the next 5-6 months and what the babies would do or learn or want or play with. And I had utterly no idea what, say, a 9 month old could use.

So I figure that as I go along, I’ll keep track of the toys we use in age-ranges of our babies, in hope that someday, another parent will find it useful! This isn’t an official review or sponsored post, it’s just what our babies have liked and used a lot. Amazon links are affiliate.

Also, FYI: Baby Cheapskate does an annual roundup of “Toys that get played with” for all age ranges, based on reader polls/surveys. Here’s the 2015 list for 24-36 months. You should follow them on Facebook--they find and post tons of deals on baby gear every day!

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Our boys just turned four years old. We have a ton of toys in our house, and I wanted to share the things they play with the most, in case you’re looking for a wish list item. Many items are things we’ve had for years! They’ve been on previous lists, but I guess I want to emphasize that many toys and activities can last for a really long time.

New Toys in the Last Year or So:

We went for the off-brand of Magnatiles, but these are still fantastic. (Though apparently I have no fantastic photos of them playing with them?) Hours and hours and hours of fun. So much creativity. They build towers, castles, trains.

They forgot about them for a couple months, but once they started waking up and getting out of their toddler beds, the magnatiles were a perfect toy to play with “quietly” in their room. I say “quietly” because usually it turns into arguing over who has more.

We got these for them at the end of August 2015, so they were a little more than 2.5. They’d already been playing with them and loving them at daycare for months, so it’s definitely something that you can buy around 2 and they will last for years.

Toddler Puzzles

Another obsession! My friend Holly sent these two puzzle boxes when they (ABC Puzzle Set and Farm Puzzle Set) and they just love putting them together. For awhile they needed a lot of help, but now they can put the whole puzzle together all by themselves. Then the boys got a set of 3 preschool train puzzles that they love. And later we got theMelissa & Doug Underwater Ocean Floor Puzzle, which is a little bigger and more difficult, but they can just about do that one on their own in the last couple weeks.

Play food

They got a bunch of these for Christmas last year (right after they turned 3) and they are OBSESSED. They use it as food, but they also use it to represent other things, or to just put into and take out of containers. (Containers of all kinds are still a big thing around here.)

These were the main surprise toys I brought out on our first airplane trip, and it was amazing. They played with them for two hours on that flight! They played with them for hours all last fall too. We have the vehicles set, the animals set, and a store/shopping set.

The boys received a toy guitar for their 2 year old Christmas, and of course they fought over it. Our nanny lent us one of her nice ukeleles, and they loved playing that. So then we made sure they got their own ukelele for their 3 year Christmas. And thank goodness! It actually can stay in tune (the toy guitar can barely even keep its strings on and it has never been in tune). Mainly, it’s great because the boys can both play something at the same time.

Car Tracks

The boys LOVE these car tracks. They were a Christmas present last year, and they are really cool! It’s these flexible pieces that you can snap together and apart, to make whatever kind of track shape you want. Kind of like an articulated snake. There are two cars with each set and they light up and zoom around. This will entertain our boys for a long time! (We have the Mindscope sets, and I’ve seen Magic Tracks appear at Fred Meyer this season.)

Plastic Beads

We played with these last winter at the community center activity nights, and the boys loved stringing beads onto pipe cleaners. So I got a few from Joann, and man, that five dollars of stuff has provided HOURS of entertainment. They love making necklaces and bracelets. And when the beads run low, we just undo one of the creations and dump the beads back in a bowl. 🙂

Scooters!

We figured they’d still be using the three-wheeled Radio Flyer Scooter scooters for a long time…but then this spring my dad brought up my brothers’ old Razor Scooters. The boys loved them and immediately started playing with them, and soon enough were zooming around like experts!

Scissors

The boys got Fiskars Preschool Training Scissors as presents last Christmas and promptly spent at least thirty minutes carefully cutting up wrapping paper. Every once in awhile they go into a scissors craze and spent a long time cutting copy paper into big and tiny pieces. It’s like a trance.

Learning Towers: The older they’ve gotten, the more they realize they can do with these. 🙂 But they’re super helpful to have–the boys can watch us cook, can wash their hands at the kitchen sink, can help us stir or bake.

Mop & broom set: If they see me start sweeping, they usually grab one of their tools and join right in.

Haba Blocks: These are amazing blocks, and sadly we keep them in a non-see-through bin so they probably don’t play with them as much as if they could see them. I think they will continue to be great toys to have!

Things we still don’t have for them:

Easel: We might finally get an IKEA one for this Christmas.

Dress-up clothes: I’m going to keep an eye out for things like half-price Halloween costumes. Then we need some kind of bin or basket (and we have bins everywhere already).

What are your favorites to add for this age group? Let me know in the comments!

I thought it would be fun to include a full rundown of our current daily life in my 2016 Project Life album. So I’m putting it here too, just for full posterity. M & E are 3 years (+ 2 months), and I know that daily routines will surely be quite different by next January.

The boys “wake up” at 7:45 – the owl clock turns green telling them they can get up. Usually they’re already awake and they yell out, “IT’S GREEN!” They can climb out of their cribs, but they don’t do it every day, and they don’t do it before we get to their room.

Breakfast is oatmeal (Trader Joe’s quick cook steel-cut oats) with smashed banana and blueberry sauce, sometimes with frozen blueberries on top. Also Cheerios, and sometimes raisins. Sometimes lately there will be a big tantrum if we don’t feed them fast enough, or in the order they prefer. (Usually it’s only one who does this, so that’s a small blessing, I guess?) After they eat, they play with stuff in their pajamas for awhile.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I usually wake up with them and our nanny comes at 8:30, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Daddy wakes up with them and takes them to daycare. On nanny days, there is a long morning outing to somewhere like a musical performance at a kid-friendly café, or OMSI, or a park. Often there’s a parks & rec class (like sports, movement, preschool cooking) in there too, depending on the season.

When they’re at home, lunch is around 1230. There’s applesauce with chia seeds, yogurt (full-fat plain, mixed with homemade mango puree [from frozen store-bought mango pieces]), and then something like a frozen whole-grain waffle with jam, or a quesadilla, or a PBJ, or lately, a scrambled egg muffin.

They go down for nap between 1-130, and wake up between 330-4. Sometimes they stir, and sometimes they call out, “I’M AWAKE!”, and sometimes one will get out of his crib and stand at the top of the stairs until we notice them.

On nanny days, after our she leaves at 4:30, I usually take them to Swap & Play. (It’s a dedicated play space with three classrooms, open til 6pm seven days a week. It has been a GODSEND since we joined after Halloween!) Twice this month we’ve gone to the local library branch to select & check out books (like big kids!). Sometimes we might also go to the store.

On daycare days, I pick them up between 530/545. They always run and hug me and it’s the best thing ever. Usually one of them has to go potty (because they’re still reluctant to go as often as they need to at daycare), so I take them to the school bathroom. We drive home and listen to “songs” – all last year it was kid songs from the two children’s CDs, but this month it’s been ‘regular’ music. They are obsessed right now with Under Pressure (Freddie Mercury & David Bowie) and Blank Space from Taylor Swift. They also like Shake it Off, Ex’s and Oh’s, some Lion King songs, some Frozen songs (they have not seen either actual movie), and a couple other random pop-y songs.

Dinner is around 630. We rotate a number of “main dishes” like mac & cheese, crockpot chili, mini pizzas from Trader Joe’s. Side/second dishes include things like pumpkin soup, a sandwich, microwave meatballs, some pirate’s booty or veggie snacks, plus a homemade veggie pouch. Sometimes they remember to ask for dessert—chocolate cat cookies, or something special that we’ve made like banana “ice cream” or, the other day, a mini chocolate cake.

About three times a week we do bath after dinner, which is about 30 minutes of playing/splashing/shrieking, then protesting when it’s time to wash up. We wash their hair once a week or so. After that, they sit on the baby couch and watch TV. For all of 2015, it was sometimes an episode of Elmo, then Daniel Tiger overtook that, and then in December, they fell in love with Super Why.

Other nights, they just play. Blocks, beads (loose plastic beads–they are a big thing right now), books, running/chasing, groceries, puzzles, coloring with stamps or crayons, random toys they re-discover. (God, we have SO many toys in our house. It’s ridiculous.)

We try to get upstairs for bed around 820. We turn on the noise machine and projector, and Mister Turtle who projects the blue and green stars. We talk about our day, maybe sing a song (we used to do it every night consistently, but have been inconsistent lately), give cuddles, and say goodnight. Often there will be requests for more hugs after we’ve gone downstairs.

Weekend days are very similar. We try to do morning outings, but sometimes it’s hard to get them out the door. We’ll go to the Vancouver Library, or Costco, or a play cafe, or if it’s nice enough, we’ll go outside. (Only happened twice so far this month…but considering it’s January, that’s pretty awesome.)

You are THREE!! Three years old! I can’t believe it. You are self-described “big kids” now.

The six months between 2.5 and 3 were the most fun yet, I think. You love learning and doing things, and it’s making life a lot more interesting and fun. (There have definitely been frustrating and difficult things, too, don’t worry.) {Since this post is so late, I’m including the rest of 2015, so a month or so after you actually turned three.}

You basically talk like big kids now. You know tons of words and you put together very long and fairly complex sentences, but you thankfully still have your toddler dialect. It’s so cute listening to you talk. Like, lately when going potty, sometimes you say you want some privacy, but you pronounce it “probacy.” You are still good about saying Excuse Me and Thank You. When you’re mad at us, you shout and stomp, “No Thank You!!” and, “Dat’s not nice!” and sometimes, “You need to go to timeout!” and often, “Don’t talk to me!” (I swear we don’t say that to them.)

You have grown so much! Each of you grew an inch and a half between June and December, and are both right around 36 inches tall (Malcolm, you’re still between 1/2 and 1 inch taller). Malcolm, you also feel a lot heavier, but according to our scale, you weigh 32 pounds and Emmett, you’ve been 30-31 pounds.

Your manual dexterity has dramatically increased and improved. You want to do pretty much everything we do. I love seeing you concentrate doing these kind of fine-motor skills activities. You practice writing, you use stamps and paints.

Potty training!! This is a big one. We’d been dreading dealing with this, and we knew at least that we wanted to wait after our big trip in September. So we both read a potty training book and scheduled our first no-diapers weekend for the long Columbus Day weekend in October. It definitely took more three days for things to ‘click’, and we felt like we would never be able to leave our kitchen, let alone our house, ever again. Thankfully that wasn’t the case–by the following week you were making clear progress. And a month later you were doing well enough to get you in big-boy undies. One of you can make it through nap with no pullup, and one of you can sometimes. We haven’t tackled night-time potty training at all yet, partly because it sounds like a ton of work and energy, and partly because you’re still sleeping in your cribs.

Speaking of cribs, you finally learned to climb out of them. Gulp! However, because you are awesome and we are so lucky, you don’t climb out very often. So we haven’t pulled the trigger about going to big-kid beds yet. We’re crossing our fingers that the transition will go smoothly whenever we do that this year. You’re also still using pacifiers for nap and bedtime. We will definitely transition away from those soon!

You’ll not only willingly hold hands when we ask, but you also sometimes want all of us to hold hands, and ask for it. ❤ ❤ You’re getting even better at hugs too (when you deign to give them, that is; sometimes you say, “I already gave you one before” or “Not right now, I’m too busy.”)–Malcolm, you like to actually put your arms around us, and you do a little hand pat. It feels magical and I swear it cures all ills. 🙂 You will also say things like, “I missed you,” and “I’m so happy to see you.” (That’s what I always say when I pick you up at daycare or come back after being gone for awhile.)

Your third birthday party was fantastic! We rented the toddler gym at a community center, and a bunch of friends enjoyed playing, doing crafts, and eating snacks and cake!

Now that you aren’t babies, we gave ourselves the gift of de-babying the house (or starting to, at least). We gave away the changing table!!! Here’s what our living room (which is also the playroom and your ‘dressing room’) now looks like.

We also stopped using sippy cups and baby dishes. Instead, we use baby utensils and Corelle bowls and small plates (they are shatterproof). The dishwasher has to run every day now, but it’s such a relief to not deal with the soak bin that had lived in the sink for three whole years. You still drink a bit of milk in the evenings, and we use either plastic cups or mugs. 🙂

Things you eat: as many snacks as we will allow you. You would probably eat crackers all day every day if we let you. And you’d probably want ‘cheesy pasta’ (mac & cheese) every night for dinner. But we rotate things and limit the snacks…which of course you protest. You love frozen peas and corn and blueberries, you adore “smoolies” (smoothies). Malcolm, you’re still more open-minded to trying new things, and Emmett, you’re still a bit picky about new things or certain elements (like if you see “green things” or tomato bits in something, you want us to take it out or you won’t eat it).

Your creativity has blossomed even more. You create toys and ideas and play situations. You pretend to be teachers and if we try to do something or say something, they say, “No! We the teachers!” Awhile ago, you watched an episode of Daniel Tiger that featured ballet, ice skating, and the Nutcracker, and once it was over, you both popped up and created ‘ice skates’ out of empty oatmeal canisters.

You still love music, and playing your baby guitar and ukelele, and now sometimes you make up your own songs to the tunes of existing ones. Here’s a moment captured from October:

“There was only time to watch half an episode of Daniel Tiger before bedtime. Not surprisingly, M and E got pretty upset when we turned off the TV in the middle of the show. M eventually picked up the ukulele, took it over to baby couch, sat down and improvised the following song (roughly to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”):

I was trying to play with Mama and Daddy / But they wasn’t listening / I wanted to watch the whole thing /
With Katerina and O the Owl and Daniel Tiger on the playground /
I wanted to watch it all day”

You are learning letters and spelling! Some must be from school, and some is from playing with the foam letters during bathtime, and some is definitely from SuperWhy (which is your newest favorite show). You know the upper-case letters, and you can spell out words! Malcolm, you pronounce the letter “L” as “ello”, which is freaking adorable.

You still do the, “Talk about it.. still talk about it.” You love learning about things and then hearing about them over and over again. And over and over again. Then you remember things from previous conversations and command us to talk about that too. (Fire engines were a big one recently. Any time we see or hear one, you say, “Talk about fire engines.” and I go through the spiel.)

Putting those two together–the reading-aloud process now often takes twice (or thrice!) as long, because there are endless questions and statements and retellings and requests for repetitions as we proceed through the book.

You’ve finally gotten into artwork! You are interested in using stamps and inkpads, and finally paint. You were psyched to paint pumpkins for Halloween, and recently you asked to paint on paper…which morphed into painting hands. 🙂 You’re getting better at coloring and seem to really enjoy that too.

You have a sense of the past, but it’s all “yesterday”. “Yesterday we got our Christmas tree!” as in several weeks ago. “Yesterday we went swimming,” as in several months ago. You have really good memories, and we are often surprised at the connections you make between happenings of the past and the present. There was one random evening this summer that we were walking outside and there was a skywriter. We sat on the side of the road and watched it write for awhile (it said Cool Moon? 🙂 ) and then like a week later, on another walk, one of you said something about the writing in the sky. Because we passed the same spot that we had watched it.

The holidays this year have been SO much fun, and filled with wonder and cuteness. Halloween was fantastic and so was Christmas.

You’ve gotten even sweeter about helping each other. If one of you is upset, sometimes your brother will offer a special toy, or a hug. Often, you don’t want it, but it’s still so amazing to see the empathy that you have for one another. Both of you do the same if one of us gets an ouchie–you’ll say, Are you okay, Mama? or you’ll come over and give us a hug.

Oh–this summer toothbrushing finally stopped being such a battle. Hallelujah. Sometimes we still have to chase you down, but you willingly open up and let us brush. Occasionally you’ll try to brush, but generally you’re playing with something and we’re contorting to reach the toothbrush to all those little teeth.

Like all toddlers, you are obsessed with construction equipment. In Washington DC, your favorite part was probably finding and watching any and all tractors, diggers, cranes, excavators, bulldozers, etc.

Overall, you’re way more independent. You can bike or scooter the whole way without help, and at the playground you can climb on things without us worrying or fretting. You can open doors and cabinets, and fetch clothes, and even open one of the baby gates (ack!).

As always, you go in waves of book obsessions. Here are some that you’ve liked a lot this year: Little Blue Truck, AlphaBlock/CountaBlock, Good Night New York/Oregon, This Book Just Ate My Dog, Chick N’ Pug/Chick N Pug Meet the Dude, What a Wonderful World, Daniel Tiger books, Don’t Let Pigeon Drive the Bus/Stay Up Late, Little Red Truck, The Little Dump Truck.

I’ve heard lots of tough things about three-year-olds…and we’re certainly seeing plenty of tantrums and power struggles and enhanced whining. But the increased personality and physical abilities and sense of humor that we’re already seeing is definitely worth the hard times. We love you so much!

On some Thursdays, I’ll share something random that I’m really liking, enjoying, or appreciating. Just a little post to share a little snippet of life right now. I’d love to know if you also like these things, and what you’re randomly into these days!

Let’s review typical toddler behavior:

They are impatient. They don’t really understand the concept of “waiting”. They rely on you to keep them occupied…or else they start exploring and potentially destroying or spilling things.

Toddlers are also picky and indecisive. Again, it’s not their fault; their tiny brains just haven’t learned how to do that yet. But you never know if they will want what you feed them. They might love it and demand more…or they might throw it on the floor and whine and/or scream. (As all parents know, the only sure fire way to know a toddler will eat something is if you’re trying to eat it yourself.)

These two behaviors are never more on display than when you’re out at a restaurant.

Enter: the buffet.

A buffet is the perfect toddler outing. There is NO WAITING. There is food, immediately. There are many different KINDS of food. They can try a couple bites of something new as well as enjoy things they already like.

As fair warning, it’s not a calm or relaxing affair to be at the buffet with small children. More like repeated, alternating trips to the food areas while trying to simultaneously feed yourself and assist the little one. The ideal situation is having one more adult than you have children, to take some of the pressure off.

Now, a place like a buffet chain restaurant may not be a high-quality fine-dining experience, but I’m okay with that sometimes.

HOWEVER!

Did you know?? Some McMenamins properties do holiday buffet events! We went to Edgefield for Thanksgiving dinner last year and for Easter brunch this year.

See, we aren’t really the cooking type, and I don’t eat a lot of typical Thanksgiving food, so by going to a buffet we get all the benefits–quality food, no waiting time, a fun family outing–with none of the prep time, stress, or cleaning. (And kids under four are free!) WIN-WIN.

This year we will be doing Thanksgiving at the Kennedy School. And I am excited for all of us. 🙂

Each new holiday that we have with our boys becomes more and more fun. They’re two years old, almost three. This year is the first time they understood Halloween. Through October, we all pointed out jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins in people’s yards, we visited a pumpkin patch (but didn’t have time to get a pumpkin) (I should add a post about that visit…), they picked out their costumes online, and we talked about how trick or treating works.

(We don’t really do holiday decoration at our house (partly because I’m lazy, and partly because in theory I don’t need more stuff and clutter to keep track of; I have enough piles and bins around the house and garage!) but I’m always impressed and a little envious of people who do.)

A couple weeks ago, I read this list of “Halloween Hacks” and was inspired to actually do something more Halloween-y at home. We bought four smallish pumpkins and then one evening had the boys paint them with tempera paint. They loved it! As you can see, they weren’t painting ‘designs’ or anything, just generally getting paint to cover the pumpkin. But hey, that works! It was a great activity, and they wanted to paint more the next day or two. I’d thought that perhaps I would do a monogram carving after they were painted, but I lazed out.

I let the other two pumpkins sit until finally on Halloween morning I was like, okay let’s do this! I hadn’t done any carving of pumpkins since some time in the mid 1990s at the latest, so I wasn’t sure how I would do. It was a LOT of work and I was so awkward and jagged with the knife and I seriously have no idea how people achieve those beautiful intricate carvings. There must be different, dedicated implements as the ‘secret’ to those, right? Right?

I made a generic jack-o-lantern face and then I made a train! It sort of looks like a creepy monster mouth, but I think the ‘smoke’ sort of helps, kinda? Again, these are not great, but I did it, dammit, so I was pretty proud of them.

Then finally it was Halloween evening and time to go trick-or-treating! The entire afternoon was absolutely pouring torrential rain, so we waited until well after dark, after 7pm. By then the rain was more of a light drizzle and eventually it stopped altogether. We ended up going to a few spots in our neighborhood.

M and E held our hands and helped us notice houses with their porch lights on. They would climb the steps and knock their little fists on the door or push the ‘ding-dong’. We had been practicing the routine of saying trick or treat and then thank you, but occasionally they would be bashful and say nothing at first, or say thank you first. We would prompt them and they would say the right thing and smile at the people. Many of the neighbors exclaimed over their cuteness in their costumes, and they would tell what they were dressed as. As we walked away from a house, they would say something like, “they was there!” or, “I got candy!” They were very excited about the candy and wanted to eat some right away, of course. (We didn’t let them.)

Candy aside, I just really loved watching them be so excited about the whole process. I seriously died over how cute they were in their costumes, and I was impressed that they didn’t want to take them off or complain about wearing them. Plus, it made me happy to walk around holding their little hands as we did our first family trick-or-treating. They were just so small and so full of big smiles and innocence. I think this is a really special age and I felt very lucky and grateful to have this experience together, and to be able to watch them learn about all these rituals and adventures of childhood. My sweet boys!

They got to pick out one piece of candy to eat after we got home. They were psyched. 🙂